Dog Worms: Understand Dog Worms Symptoms and Infestation

August 3, 2011

Until a very recent period, dog worms were understanding to be of a spontaneous origin, brought about by the affect of heat upon decaying vegetable matter, and it was and still is freely asserted that puppies are born with dog worms inherited from the mother in some mysterious manner while still in uterus. This has been conclusively proven an error and in the minds of all scientists there is no examine about dog worms springing from private eggs and having a complete life history of their own.

The primary worm species with which dog owners have to verbalize are round worms and tape worms. The first named generally infest puppies and consequently are most dreaded by breeders. In shape and size these worms resemble common angle worms, but in color are lighter, being roughly white or only a pale pink.

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In adult dogs these worms, when full grown, are from three to seven inches long. In puppies they are about half that length, and as thick as common white string. Round worms live in the small intestines, sometimes coiled in such masses as to obstruct the passage, and occasionally they perambulate into the stomach or are passed by the bowels.

Dog Worms: Understand Dog Worms Symptoms and Infestation

It is easy to understand that when one dog in a kennel is infected with worms, millions of eggs will be passed with the feces. These are scattered all over the floors, bedding, feeding and drinking pans. They get on the dog’s coat, are licked off and swallowed and in numbers of ways gain entrance to the digestive tracts of other dogs, where they soon hatch out and in ten days are fully developed.

This rapid amelioration catalogue for the popular reliance that puppies are born with worms, for breeders who have held post-mortems on puppies scarcely ten days old and have found in their stomachs fully industrialized round worms could catalogue for their proximity in no other way. They overlooked the fact that the prospective mother, confined in a kennel infested with worms, would get these eggs attached to her coat, belly and breasts, and the young, as soon as born, would take these eggs into their stomachs with the first mouthfuls of milk.

Symptoms Of Dog Worms Attack

Dog worms are responsible for so much sickness and so many symptoms that it is roughly impossible to mention all of them, but their proximity can safely be suspected in all dogs which have not been recently treated for them, as well as in cases where the sick person is run down, unthrifty and out of sorts.

Other symptoms are a hot, dry nose, weak, watery eyes, pale lips and gums, foul breath, mean hacking cough and a red, scurfy, pimply or annoyed health of the skin and harsh, dry, staring coat that is constantly being shed.

Wormy dogs sometimes have a depraved appetite and will eat dirt and rubbish. Some days they are ravenously hungry, the next day they will not eat at all; their sleep is disturbed by dreams and intestinal rumbling, the urine is high colored and oftentimes passed, bowels irregular, stomach actually unsettled, watery mucus is oftentimes vomited and the mouth is hot, sticky and full of ropy saliva.

Puppies which are full of worms bloat actually and are pot-bellied. After feeding their stomachs distend disproportionately to the number of food consumed. Their bodies are also subject to scaly eruptions and their bowels to colicky pains; they do not grow as rapidly as salutary puppies should and instead of playing with each other they curl up and sleep hour after hour; they get thinner, weaker and more lifeless from day to day and if they do not waste away or die in fits and convulsions with frothing at the mouth and champing of the jaws, grow up coarse-jointed, rickety and misshapen. Puppies with worms are also liable to numbness of their rear limbs and on removal of the worms the puppies fetch control of the affected parts.

A wormy dog is normally an unhealthy and unhappy dog who leads a miserable life. It could even be deadly, especially so for young puppies. Bring your dog to a veterinarian if you are unsure. Your dog will actually thank you for that.